Ted Nelson

Sociologist, philosopher, computer industry pioneer and inventor of the term “hypertext” Ted Nelson is claiming that he knows the identity of Bitcoin inventor “Satoshi Nakamoto”. In a rambling – and, let's face it, odd – 12-minute post on YouTube, Nelson spins out the suspense, throws in a dialogue with himself as Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson, and finally ends with the statement that the mystery developer of the cryptocurrency is Japanese mathematician Shinichi Mochizuki, research professor of mathematics at Kyoto University. Bitcoin was proposed in 2008 in a paper by the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto, with the first client released in 2009 (a point Nelson scrambles at around 9:15 of his video, giving the date as 2011). His identification stands on three legs: Mochizuki can rightfully be identified as being smart enough to have conceived of Bitcoin; Mochizuki doesn't ...